The Coco Chanel of Cannabis is Designing Handbags for the Modern Woman Looking to Conceal Her Pot

Coco Chanel, a smoker, made pockets popular in women’s clothing last century. She created the compartments for her cigarettes.

In 2014, a similar thought process led Jeanine Moss to create accessories company AnnaBis, offering handbags with secret aroma-blocking compartments—perfect for carrying marijuana. Moss, 61, grew up in California and moved to New York in her twenties to work in advertising on Madison Avenue. She did that for decades but in recent years thought a lot about women, marijuana, and secret compartments.

Ladies have special needs when it comes to weed. “Whether they’re in prohibition states like Texas, or legalization states like California, women value privacy, security, and modesty. They have to be more discreet than men because the stigma surrounding marijuana use is disproportionately leveled at women,” Moss says.

Her customers routinely share horror stories about private items—including but not limited to cannabis and paraphernalia—tumbling out of purses or emitting scents, causing consternation and leading to the purchase of a bag with secret compartments that also blocks smells.

That’s exactly what Moss was counting on when she got into the market. “There’s a $12 billion luxury bag business, and I knew women would like style combined with discretion,” she says.

This isn’t the first time Moss has seen a need and acted. In the 1980s, she began writing a newsletter called Women’s Travel Connections when she realized almost every hotel she visited on her business trips had bad lighting that felt dangerous and “a shoeshine machine for men but no skirt hangers.”